Video games, pen&paper RPGs and other nerdery

Just in before the patch

WoW Patch 5.3 is rolling out in the US today, and us Euros get it tomorrow. I for one enjoy the pace of the content rolling out, but I likely won’t say that when 5.4 comes out and we’re still not done with Throne of Thunder. But intermediary patch? I’ll take it! Mists of Pandaria is the expansion of the main, but my main didn’t really have anything to do, other than valor capping. Isle of Thunder got boring real fast, and I haven’t been back for a while. I just travel through on my way to Nalak or raid night. So what will I do in 5.3? Poke around the Barrens and see what Vol’jin is up to, for sure. I really am a big fan of lore delivery in MoP. I thought Dominance Offensive lore presentation was superior to Isle of Thunder, but that was pretty much because it was on a much grander scale. You traveled around Pandaria, infiltrated Darnassus, went to Dalaran. It was awesome. Isle of Thunder lore developments usually meant exploring yet another, dreary looking part of Isle of Thunder, kill many many trolls, left side, handle it. I greatly enjoyed the Taoshi scenario, but then I am a Taoshi fangirl. She’s very cool. Grey DeLisle is perfect for her, isn’t she? That said, Jennifer Hale should totally do some voice acting in WoW. How about the first non-atrocious sounding female orc? I’d dig it.

Do Pandaren get any cooler than Taoshi? I doubt it. Makes me want to roll a pandaren rogue everytime!

I am curious to see how the Kor’kron stuff in the Barrens will play out. When I first read about it at WoW Insider, I have to admit I thought ‘Oh wowza, they’re nabbing dynamic events from Guild Wars 2’. Which is nifty. There’s no denying for me that MoP got a lot of inspiration from the competition. More NPCs with voice acting, more story, more events. I’ll be curious to see how it plays out. As long-time horde player with a horde main since 2005, the Barrens are what I consider my horde homeland. I can still turn the music on, find a nice hill, and just gaze at the sunrise, misting up. I am that sentimental.

The Barrens. The oldest screenshot on my computer.

Of course with the events being placed in the Barrens, this means the ‘glorious’ return of the Barrens chat.

What am I looking forward to the most? Probably Heroic Scenarios. I hope they’re difficult but fun. The valor points reward is quite high, and I like the idea of bonus objectives for added challenge.

Maybe I should whine about raid difficulty more often

Just last week I used this blog to complain about Throne of Thunder’s odd difficulty ramp. This past week, we only had a raid on Sunday, so I didn’t have particularly high expectations. I am happy to say that I was completely wrong! For the first time ever we one-shot Jin’rokh. He’s nominally easy, and yet we’ve never been able to get him down without one, two or three wipes first. This time we actually got him down after two puddles, just bam! On to Horridon, who was a very smooth one-shot as well. Onwards to Council. On our firstkill, Sul Empowered and we got one Sandstorm, but this week he was dead before Empowering. Sul dying is like this huge weight lifted off the raid’s shoulders. Then we went to Tortos and two things happened:

ARC’s firstkill, May 19

I don’t usually pull DPS numbers like that. 😮

So that was pretty awesome. It finally feels like our pace of progression is picking up. We managed to squeeze in one pull of Maegara and wiped at the 3rd rampage, but that made me cautiously optimistic that this won’t be so hard after all. Fantastic raid nights are such a lovely thing.

The DPS spec with 2 sub-specs

I am currently playing a dual-wielding frost deathknight. My mainhand is a 502 Worldbreaker’s Stormscythe off Jin’rokh in LFR, my main-hand is a 496 Kilrak, Jaw of Terror off Sha of Fear. Because I play dual-wield, my stat priority is that of the masterfrost playstyle: strength, expertise and hit til cap, mastery, haste, crit. According to Noxxic’s DPS Tools, no other spec scales as badly as DW frost. Ever since I saw that table, I have been depressed about my choice of weapons. In fact, I have blown many mogu runes on trying to acquire a 502 2H weapon, to maybe give Unholy a shot or be a 2H frost DK. But you know what? Noxxic’s DPS tables can go suck it, because I still manage to be top 5 on most fights in LFR. Sometimes even number 1. I am one of my guild’s top 3 DPSers, and our number 1 is another class that supposedly performs poorly, Windwalker monks. I have found that sometimes it is for the best to not look at rankings and similar and just play.

I will continue to be DW frost, because I am good at it. I know as 2H frost I could do higher single-target DPS. Yet the moment we have fights where I can cleave, and that’s still most of them, I get a chance to shine. My DPS on Tortos is only that high because there were bats, Whirling Turtles and Tortos himself to DPS.

I must admit I am not a fan of the two vastly different playstyles in one spec. Should Council drop their 2H weapon next raid, being a clear upgrade over my two 1H weapons, I still wouldn’t be able to use it straight away. 2H frost uses a completely different stat priority: strength, expertise and hit til cap, haste, crit, mastery. I have done the transition multiple times in T14, and it always requires extensive re-gemming and re-forging. It means replacing every single gem. I can’t just simply switch weapons. Is there any other WoW spec where choice of weapon basically dictates a different stat priority and a different rotation? Plus the use of a swing meter to actually play well? I can’t think of one. I myself would prefer if it was similar to fury warriors who can play either Titan’s Grip or Single-Minded Fury without different priorities. But alas, it is as it is.

Now excuse me while I go look into recommendations how to best make more gold with 5.3, because the blacksmithing PvP gear is finally slowing down dramatically.

4 Comments

Hah, don’t blame me if you hate it! I mostly like the talent system, but it depends on the class. I usually respec inbetween boss fights a lot, based on the encounter. Need a mass death grip on Heroic Feng? Sure thing. Turtles need to be slowed down? I’ll do it. Some talents need reworking though. I haven’t played a warrior since October now, so I can’t really speak about their strengths.

All the stat sticks are gone now. No more librams, relics, or warrior/rogue guns. No more melee weapons for hunters. No more wand stat stick for casters. One less slot to worry about!